The Emerald Angel

by Lady Shockbox

A sister fanfic to "The Little Details" - Angels bring comfort to the weak, though especially if they're emerald. Luckily, Terrorsaur realized that just in time when he fell in love with Waspinator. Terrorsaur's POV. Heavy Slash. Beast Wars. DISCONTINUED.

1. Act I

Here it finally is. The last part of my Terrorsaur/Waspinator "The Little Details" trilogy. I started writing this right after "The Scarlet Star" went up, but it has taken me significantly longer to write than the previous installment due to personal reasons. Now, nearly two years later, it's finally ready to leave the safety of my computer and make its debut online. This entire epic was difficult to write from a severe lack of support and motivation, but I refused to let it die in the water. I'm very stubborn that way. Unlike "The Scarlet Star" however, I will upload the chapters separately. Also, this is my first story under my new penname - Lady Shockbox - in commemoration of my seventeenth birthday and five years of being on Fanfiction.

For everyone else, I'll give you fair warning before you read, which is the same advisement that I put on "The Scarlet Star." This is not a story for the faint of heart. This fanfic contains very, VERY heavy slash, politics that involve taking away civil rights, drug references, sparkling abortion, child abuse, prostitution, gang beating, cannon death, and rape. If you're even mildly uncomfortable with any of these terms previously mentioned - mostly concerning the slash element - hit the back button right now. For those of you who plan to go along for the ride, please enjoy. Then for the people who already read "The Little Details" and "The Scarlet Star" jointly… I have yet another twist conclusion waiting at the end of the story for you.

As a final note, I now present to "The Emerald Angel."

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No, you'll never be alone

My love is just waiting to turn your tears to roses

Whispers in the Dark - Skillet

In my life we'll always go on

And my heart will go on and on

My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion

"Jack, I swear…" ~Ennis, "Brokeback Mountain"

Dedicated to everyone who lost the right to marriage with the bigoted passing of Maine's Proposition 1.

A Sister Fanfic - Based off "The Little Details"

i

My emerald angel?

I'm not one to get all sappy over love stories and tragedies. In fact, I was never a big fan of them at all. This probably came about because I had to endure so much hate during the first early years of my life while I lived on Cybertron. I got cold after that and I guess that's why I came across as being as being your standard, heartless Predacon. It's not like that for me anymore now. Especially not after what happened when I found my angel. Primus, I'll never love anyone more than him ever. Thankfully, he'll always love me more than anything too. I know that part of him wants to forget everything that happened between us before fate tore me out of his arms, but part of me also wishes that he could forget too, because then he won't have to suffer in remembering me. I hate seeing him suffer. He lived for me, functioned for me… ultimately, I lived for him too. Everything's changed though, and I can tell that he misses me. He cries himself to sleep some nights, and it kills me inside knowing that there's nothing I can do to take that pain from him. I can't even hold him like I used to anymore. All I can do is watch and guard.

I promised him that I would stay with him forever and, little does he know, I kept my promise in full. My emerald angel lit my night with stars and now it's my turn to light his… they say that the dead can't speak. Well, I think I've effectively knocked that theory right onto its shiny metal skid plate. In life, I wasn't best known for keeping my mouth shut.

I remember the whole ordeal involving us like the places he loved to be touched most on his body. It started out like any other partnership. Simple and nothing more than business.

I met him for the first time in an abandoned warehouse after Megatron had collected us - his assorted mismatched crew - for his plan to steal the Golden Disk. It was probably less than a week before the master plan was going to be carried out and we were ungenerously reduced to meeting in the slurs of an abandoned Predacon shipping port that had been shut down by Maximal law enforcement. It wasn't the one I had worked for before I quit, but I wouldn't have been surprised if the firm I worked for was shut down next. Either way, Megatron was the one who introduced me to my emerald angel. For once, the dumb tyrant of a grape faced leader did something right… I was admittedly afraid of Megatron when I first met him and I think a part of me is still scared of him now. It was his eyes. I had met someone like him during what was supposed to be the better years of my life, but then that individual ruined everything for me. Megatron had the same colored eyes as that individual.

My role in the theft of the Golden Disk wasn't supposed to deal with the actual theft at all. My job - and the job of another mech who Megatron was going to introduce me to - was to steal a ship from the nearby shipping port right by the museum where the golden relic was being stored. While Megatron walked me through the halls towards the main meeting area - I had just arrived by taxi because Seekers like myself were forbidden to fly in city airspace by Maximal law - he gave me an overview of what I was supposed to do during my mission with my assigned partner. He explained that Dinominer - who later renamed himself Dinobot - had selected the ship we would have the easiest time evading Maximal law enforcement in. Her name was the Darkside. She wasn't the type of cruiser that I was familiar with when it came to piloting, but I knew I was going to be stumped when it came to hotwiring the beauty.

"That is your partner's job. Dinominer originally hired you to do both, but he found this Predacon when we realized you couldn't rewire the ship yourself," Megatron said with very little vice. He had more important things to think about than a doubtful Seeker such as myself. The only reason I had agreed to helping him steal the Golden Disk to begin with was because I was sick of Maximal rule, and he could have cared less.

It was seemingly going to be an eventless meeting. I wasn't thinking very much of it when we entered the main room. Megatron led me to where Dinominer and Scrappernok were discussing possible security measures they would have to disable in the process of stealing the Golden Disk, but there was a mech sitting silently alone while listening to them. I hadn't met him before during previous meetings and I immediately realized this was supposed to be my partner. He was a scrawny little helicopter with green and yellow highlights along his chassis. I was an egotistical Seeker at most, but I couldn't help but to cross my arms across my chest nervously. It was an otherwise unfriendly posture but I couldn't help but take the stance. My wings went rigid and I glanced away out of apprehensiveness.

Megatron came to a stop and tapped the green mech on the shoulder, making him whip around to face our violet leader in surprise. His optics were concealed behind a baby blue visor and, when I had the chance to see closely enough, I saw that his optics were the same hue. It was an innocent color that seemed to be more in character for Maximals than Predacons.

Megatron's voice when he spoke, to this day, is still as clear as a bell to me. "You there, Terminator. That is you're name isn't it? Never mind that, I want to introduce you to your new partner. The both of you will be responsible for stealing our getaway ship and flying it to the archives where you'll pick the rest of us up. Anyways, this is Terrorsoar."

From the moment I made eye contact with him, I suppose both of us knew something was bound to intertwine our fates. If the pretty much instant silence that followed our optics meeting for the first time didn't give it away, the intensity of our stares definitely did. His optics - a serene sky blue that were cool with an oddly intelligent, disturbingly wise nature - bore into my own and I was instantly lost in them. We broke optic contact eventually, though I failed to realize that I'd someday be lost in those same eyes forever… but, for the time being, we were silent with one another. It must be hard to imagine me being quiet about anything - as I've said before, I wasn't known in life for being able to keep my damn mouth shut - but that was a fact. We only spoke when absolutely needed and there were no real conversations that passed between us.

Even after we crashed onto prehistoric Earth - I didn't realize it when we first crashed, but I know it's prehistoric Earth now - we were quiet towards each other still. I changed my name from Terrorsoar to Terrorsaur and he changed his from Terminator to Waspinator.

Despite the fact we were Megatron's only fliers and were often paired together for patrol missions, very little words ever passed between us. Aside the occasional pointing out of something suspicious while flying or me barking orders at Waspinator when we saw Maximals below, our flights were usually always very hushed. I was normally the stronger of us and consequently more prevailing, so it was easy for me to assume command of our duo. Waspinator was definitely the most headstrong - he was younger, so that made sense - but that still didn't matter in regards to finding something to fill in our wordless voids. It was still mostly silence. Back then I presumed we could call it the silence of a flier's respect, though I was clueless as to why we never wanted to actually speak. Waspinator seemed occasionally adamant to try starting some conversations up, though. I gotta give the guy props for that much. Once he idly pointed out how pretty the ground looked below while we flew over a vast savannah, although I merely shrugged it off and said it was okay before going quiet once more. It wasn't that I was nervous around him or anything, but I didn't want to accidently say something offensive to him and ruin our already strained partnership. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, as my adoptive father used to say. I didn't have to worry about myself too much though, because it was actually Waspinator who almost ruined it for me. There was a time where he asked me if I ever smoked while we were patrolling further out from the Darkside than usual. Some very bad memories slapped me across my mental face hard enough to give me whiplash. I glared at him angrily, told me no with a biting hiss, and that was when we accidentally locked gazes. We stared at one another for a long time before I forcibly made myself break the contact. I asked him to not talk to me for the rest of our flight. He didn't. It wasn't that I was truly upset with Waspinator - he couldn't have known better about my feelings towards his question - but that brief eye contact left me very anxious.

We certainly were an odd pair. I was beginning to understand why so many of the ground crawlers back on Cybertron said that fliers were weird. Waspinator was definitely no exception, poor bastard.

Before we crash landed and became stranded, the green flier was as normal as the rest of us… with the exception of Tarantulas for obvious reasons, but that's because he's a loon. Whatever. That's not the point. Point is, whether his beast-mode altered his CPU programming before the crash jarred his senses, Waspinator had severe difficulty talk in first person or without a buzz. It must have been horrifying for the poor guy when he found out he had a vocal glitch - I know I would have - and despite several elongated rounds in the CR, the damage looked to the rest of us as though it couldn't be undone. I had a feeling that he sometimes tried to will himself to vocalize normally like he used to, but he still talked like he had the intelligence level of a drone. Articulating pronouns was obviously very difficult for him and no one could really understand what the poor mech was ever talking about… all of them, of course, except for me.

Yeah. You're probably all seeing where this is going…

If you completely pushed Waspinator out of the general picture, I also went through some noticeable changes when we crashed as well. Don't get me wrong though, at least none of them were nearly as bad as Waspy's were. My voice originally had a rasp that sounded like I had been a heavy smoker back on Cybertron - which was probably why Waspinator asked me if I used to smoke - but, after getting our new beast-modes, my overall tone had a screeched element added to it. My voice alone was enough to give anyone a headache and my shriek when someone startled me or shot me down was nearly unbearable. Nearly, I say, because Waspinator never seemed to be bothered by it. I'd get plenty of complaints from everyone else - teasing Maximals included - but never Waspinator.

Still, I was the only one who did understand what he was saying from time to time, and I often translated on his behalf to the others. I mean, it was annoying that no one else could follow his speech patterns regardless of how simple they actually were. It was only third person with a severe lack of pronouns. How difficult is it to understand that? Waspinator at least seemed to be thankful with my brief interventions, and everyone eventually adjusted to his speech patterns after awhile. That definitely eased some of the awkwardness between all of us as a team, but the fact remained that Waspinator and I were still quiet with each other. He did briefly thank me for playing the role of translator in what I undoubtedly thought was an attempt at ending the silence between us, but I shrugged it off and said nothing because of how weird that made me feel. No one had ever thanked me for anything in my entire life, or at least as far back into is as I can accurately remember. We continued our silence.

Optic locking was another thing altogether. Even though we didn't speak openly to one another for whatever reason that made us uncomfortable to, our staring contests made up for it. Hugely so.

The small glances we shared turned into fully blow out, intense staring contests. We came into eye contact very often, habitually staring at one another like we were seeing the other for the first time in our entire existence. No one else seemed to notice - that made me thankful, seeing how self-conscious I was about the whole thing as it was - but it was unnerving all the same. He could have been working at a console, I at a monitor, and I would just barely incline my head to look over my shoulder when he would look as well. It was a coincidence he would do so, almost as if a higher power made him glance in my direction, and our eyes would lock like a vice grip instantly. His optics, deep blue with a cool calmness, were ones I would instantly be lost in. We usually broke the contact around the same time, but I felt as though he backed out more often. I would often both hope and dread for the next time we would have another unannounced staring bouts.

Then we tried to avoid each other completely. Tried.

I was positive that the rest of the Predacons noticed, but I honestly didn't care. Our staring contests - if you could even call them that - finally made me loose my nerve. I avoided Waspinator at all costs and, almost as if he was receptive to my thoughts, he began to avoid me as well. Even when we started the habit of purposely avoiding each other however, attempting to not to get into those staring matches still seemed almost futile. We still locked optics very often when we were forced into one another's company and, as a result, we both seemed to go to even more unconscious extremes to eliminate the chances completely. We even went as far as to fly further away from each other during patrols. I wondered if there was something we were trying to avoid about one another. It seemed like a queer thought but, then again, there were things about Waspinator that even I couldn't pin. I was never good at reading people anyways, but Waspinator was a completely new foreign language to me. During the new development in our tense association, the silence still lingered between us like a thick steel barrier.

One day however, the barrier was broken - like Megatron's ugly mug after I was through with it, at least - when I tossed Grape Face over the side of a cliff. That was after I supercharged myself on raw energon in a drunken attempt to overthrow our leader. I wish I could remember it… the first half hour, at least. It wasn't so great after those thirty cycles were up.

From what I was told after it happened, I apparently absorbed energon directly into my superstructure after coming into contact with the flying mountain. I don't remember how that happed. From what I was also told, I immediately left the island to confront the rest of the Predacon fleet on one of the many tall plateaus overlooking the Darkside's lovely lava fields. They were all up there to test out new grid security system and, almost immediately finding them, I challenged Megs to a fight for leadership. He didn't count on me winning. I did. Everything gets really fuzzy around there, so I can't recall exactly what was going through my head when I shot him in the chest to send him hurdling over the cliff. After I crowned myself leader, Waspinator also told me that I doubled over in pain. Apparently I suffered from an energon surge from my energy high. What goes up must come down as they say, and my power reserves were rapidly draining. I flew back to the mountain to recharge myself.

Bad idea. The Maxis beat me to it. Some of the scuffing on my hide suggested that I got into a midair brawl with Primal, but the only thing I can actually recall from the ordeal was seeing those bombs strapped to several energon crystals. The floating mountain was blown up, courteous of Rattrap's trademark energy charges. Fragging rat.

I barely managed to get out there by the skin of my teeth, but the exploding energon reserves nearly frying my skid plate were the least of my problems. I wasn't fully aware of it at the time due to the energy deprivation hangover starting to settle over my head, but I was in some very serious trouble. I escaped from the detonating debris of the obliterated mountain and found it in my best interest to return to the Darkside to regroup with the rest of my Predacons… they weren't my Predacons anymore of course, but I didn't know then. The flight back was laborious and halfway there, my online computers warned me that my power reserves were depleted so badly that stasis lock was imminent. I ignored it for the most part, but I was on the verge of collapse when I reached the base. I came in from the western side and swopped in, trying in my best power to keep my wings steady as I did. I could imagine that I looked like total slag. My sense of coordination was shot and the red aurora and sparking waves that once consumed my frame were gone, replaced by the shakiness, unsteadiness, and instability of someone who was coming down from being overcharged. It was painfully obvious from the shadow of the ship where Scorponok, Megatron, and Waspinator stood that I was trying my best not to drop out of the sky unconscious from the energy loss. It was then I landed in beast-mode, stumbling and nearly falling, that Megatron revealed himself to me. He stalked out of the darkness with the air of a predator floating around him.

"Well, well. Look who's back…" Megatron's voice was menacing and it hardened with every word, dripping with a silent promise that there would be much hurt in store for my sorry skid plate.

I felt all the color from my face leave me at the sight of him walking towards me. I squawked out a weak help. I clumsily transformed to my robot-mode and stumbled backward. My already poor coordination made my footing fail and I stumbled. I tripped heavily and landed hard on his back, barely managing to not hit his head against the cooled rock of the lava pits our ship had sunken into. Helpless and unable to escape Megatron's wrath…

"Zztop!"

And then everything went dark. Did I think I was dead? Pitt yeah. I figured I would be scrapped into another lifetime after my botched up takeover attempt, but that didn't happen. In fact, as I came to learn later, I wasn't even scrapped up at all. In the meantime however, during my unconscious bout brought up by my exhaustion, I had a strange dream. It was pitch black in an endless void of darkness and freezing bitter cold. I couldn't tell left from right or up from down, and trying to move was just as useless as trying to cry out for help. It was as if someone cruelly tied me down with weights. The more I thought about it, the more I could distinctly feel the pressing heaviness of actual chains keeping me grounded to the floor. My claustrophobia kicked in and I was starting to hyperventilate and vainly struggle free. My attempts were entirely fruitless. I tried to scream for help several times - I knew no one would come, but there was nothing else I could do and I was becoming increasingly desperate - but my voice was lost in the darkness. That was around the same time when I started hearing voices. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I honestly didn't want to. I was scared out of my Primus damned mind. There was nothing benevolent about those constant whisperings. The worst part was what - I swear this on my entire life - that they were coming closer. Once I thought I saw something shuffle out of my line of vision twice. It was absolutely horrifying.

Then there was a light. A green one. I cranked my head to look out of surprise, but I had to turn away because of the brightness. The weights crushing me down were lifting away and, all of I sudden, I felt as if I was airborne. There was a rhythmic humming from the direction of the light.

I know now that it was buzzing.

When I regained consciousness, Waspinator was the first one to see me. I awoke to the liquid warmth of the CR chamber and recognized where I was only because of my blurred vision looking out into the white gelatinous substance of the tank. I gave a mental sigh of relief, but inwardly groaned when I felt the soreness still lingering in my body. And I had a headache. 'Perfect,' I thought bitterly to myself. The platform rose underneath me and caught me on its metal surface. When it brought me up out of the liquid, I could feel the extent of my aching body. All the damage was repaired, yeah, but it would take awhile for the ache to go away. That was something that the CR couldn't naturally cure, even on its highest settings. I felt like I had a hangover… which was actually a pretty accurate expression. I glanced around wearily trying to get a grip on my surroundings.

Someone to my immediate right cleared their throat.

The gears in my neck snapped when I turned he turned to face the perpetrator. I was caught off guard by how close he sounded, and I was also caught off guard by how close he actually was too. I never even heard him jump onto the lift when I resurfaced. Standing on the deck with me was none other than Waspinator. He was kneeling down so that he was more at my level and he was regarding me with those strange blue eyes. I didn't meet them. I looked at his chest instead.

He spoke up. His voice a strangely articulated razz. "Terror-bot is welcome."

"For what?" I shifted my head to look up to him, but I quickly stilled the movement. I was as uncomfortable as the Pitt. Out of the corner of my optic, I saw that we were in the command center. I saw Scorponok working at a monitor and Tarantulas standing by him, but I didn't see Grape Face anywhere. I still has to presume he was in the room, seeing he was usually always in his throne chair and my view of it was cut off by Waspinator's blocking view. I mentally thanked the klutzy bug for it.

Waspinator buzzed, breaking back into my train of thought. His voice was confident. "Terror-bot came back when floating mountain exploded. Was overcharged and Megatron went to slag Terror-bot. Wazzpinator stopped him."

That caught my attention. I looked up at him fully, resorting to simply looking between his eyes to continue avoiding his gaze. It looked to me as though Waspinator was staring in between mine as well, although not without noticing the bewildered look undoubtedly shining within his optics. There was a contemplative look on his face. My voice was quiet when I spoke up again. "What?"

"Wazzpinator saved Terror-bot from getting his butt kicked by Megatron. Terror-bot is welcome."

I blinked once, twice, and then the thought crossed my mind that he must have wanted something from me. I couldn't fathom of a reason why he would have saved my skid plate otherwise. The thought sounded ridiculous at first but, the more I reminisced about it, the more it made sense. I thought about the outcry of I had heard before I went offline. No one razzed like that but Waspinator. It had to have been him. The thing was, I couldn't understand why he would have wanted to help me. I had never done anything for him, so what did he want?

I thought about it for a split second. A very, very bad memory prodded my core processor.

I looked downcast and attempted to stand. I was unsteady on my feet at first, but I immediately declined help by swatting Waspinator's hand away when he tried to assist me. Now I was starting to feel unsafe. I glanced over my shoulder towards the rest of the command center - everyone was at work and I was finally able to see Megatron glancing in our general direction every few moments - and I mentally cursed. I wasn't going to stick around if he was here. I figured it would be far wiser to face Waspinator than Megatron, regardless as to what the wasp mech wanted from me. I mumbled quietly, addressing my wingmate. "Let's talk this over somewhere more private. Your room is closest I think."

Then he pointed out that his room was towards the very back of the quarters hall. This meant mine was closest. I cursed quietly after he corrected me.

"Fine. We'll head down to mine. Follow me."

I unsteadily lifted into the air and took off for the passage that lead to the hallway. I could hear Waspinator's buzzing wings as he followed after me. I didn't dare look over my shoulder to see if Megatron had been present as Waspinator and I entered the extra CR hold chamber before blowing past it going towards the barrack halls. We passed the captain quarters flanking my left - I lead the way down the darkened corridor while he followed - before we passed Scorponok's on the right and found ourselves in front of mine. I entered the code on the access panel just beside the frame, hopefully too fast for Waspinator's eyes to follow, and the door hissed open. I stepped in first and he followed me.

Waspinator breathed sharply. I figured it was because of surprise. "It's just a secondary cabinet quarters. Scorponok turned it down because it didn't have a big enough work station for him. Tarantulas didn't want it either, so I called it."

Which I was very glad that I initially had. My room was about a quarter larger than the standard with a slightly larger berth by only a few inches in width. A desk sat on the opposite side of the room to face the right wall, but the window that took the space in between was huge. Its height was probably somewhere around the size of Rattrap, but the length stretched from the end of the berth's headrest to the edge of the desk. It was dark from the fact the sun had set a while back, but the light from the two moons shone through the reinforced space proof glass to cast its luminescence across the two pieces of furniture in a way that lit up the whole room. I cleared his voice and told the lights to activate. They did so immediately.

I quickly walked across the room and sat on my recharge berth, holding my head in my hands and propping my elbows on my knees. My headache was starting to really bother me and I didn't want to have my back to Waspinator any longer than I had to. He was on my playing fields now - in my living space - and that made me highly nervous as it was. Out of the corner of my vision however, I could still see that the wasp was still standing at the front of the room. Maybe he was still admiring my space. Either that, or he was stupidly waiting for an invitation. I waited for half a click and, when he still didn't move, I spoke up. "You can take the roller."

"Thankzz," he murmured. From what I could see from looking downcast at the floor, he was crossing the room stiffly and he took a stiff seat in the roller chair by the desk. He turned it around so he could face me.

I had to resist looking up to watch him, both afraid to look and terrified not to. He didn't seem malicious in any sort of way, but that didn't stop me from feeling suspicious. If he helped me, I was damn well sure that he wanted something… I was just honestly terrified of what it was. Memories of my past life flooded my core processor and I had to very desperately force myself to suppress the shudder that wanted to wrack my hide. I kept my head downcast and rubbed at my temples in a vain attempt to clear my migraine. "What is it you want?"

"Eh?" From what I could see looking up at him with my eyes, Waspinator was staring at me nearly sincere stupidity. He blinked with that same naive air looming over him. Innocence - an element that I could thankfully easily recognize, after the nightmares I had to endure back on Cybertron - shone in his blue optics like light playing off water and I instantly breathed a mental sigh of relief. He looked genuinely confused though. He was probably wondering why I asked him what it was he wanted. I didn't think he was that stupid, but I was glad that he wasn't thinking of what I had initially feared. I overestimated his intentions.

I didn't look up when I spoke again. It wasn't that I was still nervous, but now I was beginning to notice the pounding in my head more noticeably now. I continued to hold my head in my hands and I massaged my aching temples my digits. "You know what I mean. Preds only do things for people if they want something. If you saved me from Megatron beating the slag out of me for my takeover stunt, then you must obviously want something. What is it?"

Waspinator razzed, irritating my harsh headache. He might have been hurt, but I was sure that he understood Predacon nature enough to know that I didn't necessarily mean anything by it. Being second class citizens, Predacons like us often had to survive off the streets for a good portion of our lives. None of us in the Darkside save for Megatron - who had become a very successful public speaker and lawyer - and Tarantulas - from only Primus knows where - had a decent living when we joined the crew. Scorponok had been living in a rescue shelter, one of very few that didn't discriminate against Predacons, while Dinobot had come from an underground Predacon fighting league. As far as I knew, Waspinator had simply been homeless. Myself… I'd rather not talk about it. Not right away at least. Later. I looked up and saw that Waspinator was blankly staring ahead of himself, deep in thought.

I cleared my throat.

He snapped back to attention and turned his head to fully look at me again. He must have seen the weariness in my eyes, because he quickly spoke again to fill the empty silence. "Wazzpinator could see Terror-bot needed help. Wazzpinator was only one there that was willing to give it. Wazzpinator doesn't want…" He trailed off, mulling his thoughts over for a moment or so. "…Maybe Wazzpinator have idea."

I raised an optic ridge. "What?"

He shrugged in a nonchalant fashion. "Maybe… Maybe we'zz could watch each otherzz back? Wazzpinator could help Terror-bot get out of tight jams if he gets there and Terror-bot can salvage Wazzpinator if he blowzz up?"

That was it? Apparently, judging by the silence that followed, it was. He wanted nothing more of me… and, obviously, had only come up with the terms off the top of his head. He never saved me because he wanted something from me. He saved me because he felt that he should. If I wasn't such an egomaniac back then, that might have moved me now more than it did. I mentally recapped. Even if I agreed to save his sorry aft every time he managed to get it scrapped - which, granted, I knew was going to be very frequently - I would at least have someone to bail me out of Megs ever lost his temper with my… treachery… again. The more I thought about it, I figured Waspinator would help me out regardless as to whether or not I agreed, but I decided against it. If he was going to be one of the very few people in my life who was going to behave hospitable towards me, I might as well let him. I let out a dry laugh. Predacons and hospitable weren't words that usually went in the same sentence. I looked at the ground, shook my head dismissively, and then glanced back up at the wasp mech with a light smirk tugging at the corners of my mouth. "I guess we sorta… Got off on the wrong hand before. I wouldn't have avoided you so much if I knew you would ask me a favor and do something in return. You'd help me if Megs decided to chew me out?"

Waspinator nodded reassuringly. He reminded me almost of a little kid in that split second. He certainly seemed to have the psyche of one, at least. "As long as Terror-bot helped Wazzpinator to a CR chamber if Wazzpinator couldn't get there."

My smirk twitched at one corner of my mouth. I held out my hand. "Deal. So let's start over… the name's Terrorsaur."

I extended my own hand and grasped his in a firm handshake. "Wazzpinator."

And our hands, oddly enough, stayed interlocked for longer then they should have.

There was an abrupt change in the air of the room, and we both spontaneously looked into each other's face and accidentally locked eyes. His ocean blue ones met mine and burned through me like liquid fire. I instantly let go of his hand out of reflex. As a response, he did as well. We both pulled back in unexplained embarrassment and I instantly looked away. I couldn't be sure whether or not he followed my gesture of serene discomfort, but I randomly imagined he was looking at me with those strangely beautiful eyes that, for reasons beyond me, made my spark flutter in my chest when I thought about it. It was an oddly queer sensation and, to an extent, it bothered my logic circuits and made my emotion chips whir almost annoyingly.

The boisterous, wordless moment lasted only a cycle or so before I finally broke it forever.

Waspinator reached behind his head and rubbed it tentatively, buzzing in a nervous tone and razzing when he spoke. He didn't look at me. "Zzo… Friends?"

The silence was broken. Everyone noticed it.

When we went to start our duties the next morning, everyone in the control room was gawking at our new behavior. It was hilarious, actually. Tarantulas and Scorponok kept looking at me like I had maybe lost some of my processing bytes… which, more than likely, I probably had. You would too if you overcharged on an entire mountain's worth of raw energon! We even requested to have the same shift times as one another… fine. Waspinator did, but only because I wasn't ready to, erm, confront our mighty leader, yet. Not so soon after my botched up takeover, at least. Though I didn't try a takeover attempt during the few weeks that followed, poor Waspinator was blown to scrap nearly everyday at some point or another. Sometimes he wasn't even shot at. Once he crashed into a tree. It was funny at first, but it was just downright depressing when he did it again on the same tree just two frelling days later. Surprisingly to even myself though, I held up on my half of our little deal. I would linger behind after battles when Waspinator's parts littered the ground like confetti and I'd laboriously help pick his pieces up when the coast was clear. I usually didn't wait for him by the CR chambers after the incidents but, as time went on, I would stay around the tubs more and more often to see him when he woke up. At first I told myself that I was only doing this because I intended to scold him for his idiocy, but I never actually reprimanded him for doing anything when his repair cycle was over. Patrols became a breeze and we'd often talk about random slag that came to mind. As time went on, the other Predacons seemed to become used to it and dismissed what we had as a close companionship.

They were right. We were becoming close, and it was happening very quickly. Almost quicker than I was comfortable with. The reason I say almost is because neither of us could really take the time to notice. We were still making eye contact and getting lost in one another's eyes though. If the rapid progression of our partnership didn't bother me, that did.

Even with our 'friendship' taking to the air, we would still meet each other's optics and lock gazes. The frequency at which we did this didn't lessen, but I sometimes still got the notion that they were happening more and more often. We would be conversing or maybe looking in each other's direction before, suddenly, I would find myself drowning in Waspinator's optics like they were azure oceans with rip currents that pulled me under where I couldn't breathe. Sounds stupid, right? I thought so. I would usually break the contact when our awkward staring matches started - very often I did, because they made me so fragging nervous - but we never mentioned or questioned each other about it. A part of me was glad for that too. It was almost as awkward as trying to have a humane conversation with one of the arachnids, but it didn't put much of a hamper on our rapidly progressing friendship… emphasis on rapidly.

The Darkside computers had detected a stasis pod landing in the northern most part of neutral territory. Grape Face - of course - hatched another harebrained scheme of his just moments after the pod crashed into the snowy plains. I had to wonder whether or not he had a backup drive in his head dedicated to spur of the moment planning. He probably did. Anyways, because Optimus Primal was the only flier in the Maximal group, he would be the fastest in reaching the pod. Waspinator and I were to be sent to the Axalon to take him out before he could leave the base. Once he was down - Megatron emphasized on the word terminated, son of a glitch - my green companion and I would immediately report back to base for debriefing before leaving to retrieve the pod ourselves. The rest of the Maximals would have to leave on foot, leaving maybe only one other to guard their base. That would be where Megatron, Scorponok, and Tarantulas took it over.

Which was how Waspinator and I found ourselves hiding behind a rock just beyond the Axalon's scanning range. I was beginning to see that this plan wasn't as glorified as Megs made it out to be. No surprise there.

Waspinator razzed low, uneasiness coming over him which he crouched low. "Wazzpinator glad he didn't become cop. Stakeoutzz are boring."

I snorted next to him, keeping my vision locked on the ship's still form in search of even the slightest movement. The sun had long since set several megacycles ago - it had also been four weeks since Waspinator and I had made our little deal and conjured our companionship - while peppers and crickets dominated the nighttime orchestra. A wild dog of sorts roared somewhere in the jungle a little ways away, though the sound hadn't issued forth again since. Our breathing was shallow even though we knew full well the Maximals wouldn't detect us, but old habits have a tendency to die hard. We didn't want risk alerting them to our presence and getting shot at. Even if Waspinator didn't, at least I had a moderately adequate sense of self-preservation… the flying mountain incident doesn't count. Bug off. My voice was quiet when I addressed my insect partner. "They don't allow Predacons to serve on the force anymore. Not since Proposition sixteen about three stellar cycles ago. It passed the ballot by ninety percent of the vote."

He buzzed and glanced over at me, blinking almost stupidly. Poor mech probably didn't follow up on politics before the Golden Disk heist like I had.

Subsequent to the creation of the Pax Cybertronia - a peace treaty made by the Autobots, signed by them and the defeated Decepticons - the Great Reconfiguration had taken place. The change was made mainly to save energy resources by reducing the size of our kinds' trademark massive bodies, turning Autobots into Maximals and Decepticons into Predacons. The great old Cybertron cities like Iacon and Kale were built over to accommodate our new forms.

Then life turned into a living Pitt for us Predacons.

In spite of to the fact Optimus Prime had specifically put all his time and energy into making the Pax Cybertronia's focus on freedom being the right of all sentient beings, Autobot or Decepticon, Maximal or Predacon, he didn't live long enough to make sure that vision would come to light. The Swarm, a massive cloud of black mass that had been created in some freak lab accident, became a huge threat when it wiped out all the Transformers stationed on Earth by effectively eating them alive. The cloudlike mass immediately began a headlong course for Cybertron and Optimus left the planet in an attempt to stop it. Opening the Matrix ended up being the only solution, but the resulting light hitting the pure darkness of the Swarm's life source caused a massive explosion.

It became known as the day Optimus Prime died to save Cybertron. It was also the day any hope for the Predacon faction died as well.

The Pax Cybertronia, ironically, was purposely misinterpreted by the Maximal government. Damn fraggers. Freedom being the right of all sentient beings was still written in the Pax Cybertronia, true, but an amendment added onto it without Predacon citizen consent stated that 'freedom' was what laws didn't prohibit. It was a dirty move on the Maximal Elders' part but, then again, they could do whatever the Pitt they wanted to now. All because Optimus had saved all of Cybertron, the minority second class had to suffer as a consequence.

There were seven Maximal Elders in total, each representing one of the seven major cities of Cybertron, but many Predacons were upset over the fact their rights were on the verge of being stripped because of their ancestry. It was how the Tripredicus Council was created. Not that they were any help to the Predacon population, of course. Damn slaggers. They didn't do anything to intervene with the bigoted and racist laws that started to pass. One of the major laws passed was that Predacon and Maximal sparklings were segregated in schools… or, at least, for what little Predacons schools there already were. The last major law to pass before Megatron organized his plan to steal the Golden Disk, it was illegal for Predacons to sign up for full bondmate benefits. They had to settle for domestic partnerships.

In other words, politics sucked if you were a Pred. Life sucked if you were a Pred.

Waspinator's voice broke through my thoughts. "Predaconzz not be police anymore?"

"Nope." I nonchalantly shook my head and looked my gun over. I checked the energy reserves for what had to be the millionth time within the past ten cycles. I was hoping that Waspinator would only think that my repetitive actions as only being brought about because of boredom, but it was actually because I was a nervous wreck on the inside of my casing. I was nearly scrapped by Megatron for impertinence once and I didn't want to risk irking him again. Especially not so soon after my previous little endeavor. "It wouldn't have been such a landslide election if more of the Predacons had voted. There was even a criminal investigation involving a Maximal power group threatening Predacons who tried to vote 'no' on the proposition. It didn't go very far because it was disregarded by the Elders."

Waspinator made a low hiss in the back of his throat. "Optimuzz would've been upset. Prime-bot would've never allowed thizz to happen to us."

"Maybe," I drawled. I straightened out and my voice dropped to a harsh whisper when I saw that the Axalon's main entry platform was lowering. "Look."

Waspinator followed my gaze. Standing on the Axalon's half lowered podium was Dinobot, hunched down low and scanning the landscape with a hard expression. Beside me I heard my partner curse softly. I couldn't blame him. I felt rather stupid myself for not thinking that the Predacon traitor would be suspicious of the all too silent landscape. I held my breath and Waspinator did as well. After several tense moments, the ex-Predacon's eyes flashed a dark red before the lift began to rise back up into the base. After the hiss of the lift's mechanisms silenced, peepers and crickets resumed their night song without further interruption.

Waspinator was muttering. "Megatron wantzz to restart Great War so we can get our freedom back… But what happen if we'zz loose?"

I sighed dejectedly. "We go extinct."

There was movement from the Axalon's lift again and Dinobot was still on it. This time though, Optimus Primal was with him. The platform lowered to the ground completely and the ape took off into the air. Gripping our guns in a death hold, my partner and I tensed immediately just as Optimus turned so he could address Dinobot. His back was facing us.

I hissed. "Now."

We both fired, but the sounds of our guns going off did nothing to alert Optimus to our presence. Waspinator's gun had a faster projectile speed than mine, but his aim was generally horrible. Surprisingly enough however, his hit his target dead-on. Optimus cried out and Dinobot shouted something about an ambush. By another stroke of luck, Waspinator shot the Predacon traitor rotator shield out of his hands.

"Oooooh!" He ducked back down behind the rock, his optics alit with enthusiasm, and I looked over at him with equally lit optics. Waspinator grinned and slapped his gun to his chest. "Wazzpinator got him!"

I screeched and let my grin nearly cut my face in half. "Watch this!"

I felt my expression darken. This was going to be fun. I narrowed my optics and activated my shoulder mounted cannons so that they unfolded from their hidden compartments to snap into an able firing position. Very, very fun. The mechanisms inside whirred and I stood. It was an awful place to expose myself since I was left completely open, but I had to chance it or risk missing. Across the way, Dinobot saw me and dropped into a fighting stance, but I seized my opportunity and shot out a pair of twin blasts at Primal. The dumb Maximal leader seemed to recover from being stunned courteous of Waspinator's lovely shot, but the ape was hit square in the chest a moment later regardless. The gorilla mech was blown back with a serious wound decorating his chest. He still lived - I was positive of that much - but if we could hit him again…

I squawked, ducking back down and grinning. I fisted the air in front of me victoriously. "Yes!"

Waspinator razzed brightly. "Good shot, Terror-bot!"

Dinobot finally shot back.

There was a flash of green and an explosion over our heads. Dinobot had shot the cliff face my wingmate I had flanking our right… and Waspinator was closest to it. The explosion caught the both of us off guard to the point where I flinched and Waspinator's wings went erect in surprise, but it was only a small explosion. Making the mistake of presuming the attack was poorly calculated, we both looked away just before I heard rock rubbing against rock. Waspinator looked at the same time I did. The cliff face hadn't been shot by accident, and he hadn't missed his intended target at all. He had been aiming for a large boulder up there in an attempt to take the both of us out, sneaky bastard. It wasn't large enough to take us both out, but Waspinator was unlucky enough to be right underneath the damn thing.

Waspinator had no time to move before the mass slammed down onto his unfortunate hide. There was a sharp crunch, followed immediately by silence.

I flinched back and lifted my arms up to cover my face in defense. When the rock actually hit y partner with a crunch, I unveiled my vision. My partner wasn't there, and only the hulking huge boulder replaced him. Ice surged through my circuitry. Waspy had been blown to bits before, but never crushed. How heavy was that thing? Three tons? Was that heavy enough to cave in spark and processor casing? Were Waspinator's intake valves crushed? Was he hurt? Not just hurt as in Waspinator-will-be-fine-when-he-wakes-up hurt, but seriously hurt? My mind reeled, stumbled, and tripped all over its unorganized self in a futile attempt to make sense of the situation. In the distance, I could hear Dinobot shriek a defiant "Yes!"

Son of a mother fragger, if he hurt Waspinator, I was going to kill him. I was too frazzled to come to terms with the gravity of my thoughts. I unclipped my handgun in slow motion and fired at the boulder without a second thought.

Rocks exploded outward when my shot destroyed the boulder in one hit. Either the rock was weak, or my weapon was overcharged. I hoped it was the earlier, because that meant that maybe the rock wasn't as heavy as I originally estimated. Maybe Waspinator would be fine. Thankfully, he was. He was laying on the ground sprawled on his back with his wings crushed underneath him. At first I thought he was unconscious, but then he moved… and suffered from an energon surge. His field dampeners had been damaged and he couldn't withstand the energon radiation in the area anymore. With the crackling of blue electricity dancing around his frame, he struggled to move. It was a valiant attempt - I had to give the bugger that much credit - but futile all the same. His voice was breathless, but also panicked. The wind as well as his sense of security had been knocked out of him. "Oh no, Wazzpinator in trouble…"

I crossed the distance between us and leaned over him. He didn't look hurt aside from the obviously crushed wings and energon surges. I tried to regulate it, but I still think that I sounded breathless. "We did our job, now let's go! Back to base!" I extended my hand to him in an almost dreamlike state, the same one I shook with him when we reintroduced ourselves to reignite our partnership. Waspinator reached out to grab a hold of my wrist. I grabbed his in a vice hold as a response before glancing up over the cover we had taken. Dinobot was still out in the open, yeah, but it would be a lot better to scram now before the rest of the Maxis decided that they needed to join the party. I ducked back down and braced my legs before upping the power of my antigravs so that they maxed out to their fullest power output levels. I pushed off the ground and leapt into the air with a trademark screech.

"Cowards! Face me!" Dinobot's battle cry didn't fall on deaf audios, but there was no way in the Pitt that I was going to do as he requested. Better to run and live than to fight and get your aft handed to you, in my opinion. I had to zip out of the way of the raptor's laser fire when his optical laser nearly seared my hide. Waspinator razzed, gripping to me for dear life and still sparking from his injuries. In spite of Dinobot's furious laser fire, we managed to get out of range of the Axalon a few moments later. The nighttime song of peepers and crickets was replaced by cold evening wind rushing past our bodies. Our endeavor could have gotten better, but it still could have been worse. I was glad that it wasn't.

I was out of breath and panting, but I still had enough bearings and overall resolve to look down at my save. My voice was breathless. "You okay?"

"Wazzpinator fine," he said. As if fate was determined to show how much it hated him, he flinched in pain. Despite that, I felt confident he wouldn't have to be in the CR for more than a few cycles to repair the damage done. We both went silent for awhile. Out of the corner of my vision, I could see Waspinator watching the ground as it rushed underneath us. I kept my views locked on the sky. The stars were bright against the midnight black and there were only a few sparse clouds obscuring the sight of the planet's twin moons looming almost ominously overhead. I tried to focus on them. My mind was still flashing back toward everything that had conspired within the past few cycles. It all seemed to be going so smoothly… but then Waspinator was nearly hurt, and now I was barely able to focus on remembering which direction the Darkside was in. I felt like I had been conked over the head with something heavy. I felt like I was forgetting something, but couldn't remember what it was.

After what felt like forever, Waspinator's voice broke through my fruitless musing. "Why did Terror-bot do that?"

"Do what?" My mind was still reeling. Even I could hear the distraction in my voice.

Waspinator razzed somewhat impatiently in response. "Terror-bot came back for Wazzpinator before fight was over. Why Terror-bot do that?"

Why did I do that? That's why I had that feeling that I forgot something, because technically I did. Why did I help him? Why should I have cared? I could have left that damn klutz back there without risking my own hide to save his and, even then, he probably still would have been fine. I felt my face twist irritably. While we flew, I thought I saw a flash of green in the corner of my vision. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I spoke. "…I, uh, need you for part two of the mission. No way in the Pitt I'll go alone and risk getting outnumbered by the Maximals if they show at the last cycle. And, um, it would be too risky to retrieve you later."

"But we'zz didn't destroy Ape-bot," Waspinator countered with a tight rasp. He knew just as much as I did that there was no way the Maximal leader had been destroyed from the damage we did to him. I presumed that he figured that grape-face wouldn't be very happy over the failure.

I snorted. "He can go to the Pitt for all I care. You all right?"

He reminded me that I had already asked him about that. I cursed softly to myself realizing my mistake and turned away, not speaking to Waspinator again until we returned back to the base.

That was when it really dawned on me that I saved him in the middle of a battle instead of hiding and retreating his pieces once it was all over and done with. That had never happened before. Ever. No one had ever cared about me before, so why was I suddenly feeling the urge to care about others? It scared me a little. What bothered me even more was that I had hadn't realized how innocently blue his optics were, how intelligent he really was, and that his green was less of a green and more of an emerald.

Upon returning to the base, he spoke again. "Thank you."

I didn't look at him. I slung his arm over my shoulder instead so I could assist walking him back into the base due to the injuries he sustained. "You're welcome."

I was right about Waspinator not needing too many repairs, despite my initial opinion that he had potentially been injured badly. He sat in the CR tank for no more than three cycles before we went into the control center to report back. Tarantulas and Scorponok stood on hover pads positioned beside Megatron from an angle, and Waspinator and I jumped onto hover pads of our own. We brought them in front of Megatron and I gave the report myself. Waspinator still had noticeable nicks and dents in his armor from not staying in the CR long enough to do a complete patch up and I was still panting from bringing him back. My voice was a collected tenor, but I could only hope that it wasn't wavering enough to let the other know that I was nervous. That had been the first time I had talked to Megs since my failed takeover.

"…We hit him pretty hard, but Dinobot kept us from killing him because he knocked a boulder onto Waspinator. I had to retrieve him but we were still in danger of being overrun. We had to make a tactical retreat."

"So, Optimus Primal was not destroyed," Megatron said slowly. He was definitely surprised when I mentioned saving Waspinator during the fight - the way the tyrant's mauve optics lit up was an immediate indication of this - but he recovered his usual mask of composure just as quickly. He leaned back in his throne. To me, it was a menacing gesture. His voice was cool and collected, but loathingly spiteful at the same time. "You disappoint me Terrorsaur, yes."

"But, we… We knocked him half to scrap!" My voice stuttered very noticeably and I could feel the tenseness of terror creeping into my circuitry. I blinked and my voice rose to cover my rising panic. "No way he'll be flying anywhere!"

Megatron looked ready to interject, his face annoyed and his mouth twisting into a threatening and ugly frown - I was about ready to flinch back in terror as soon as I saw that murky stare - and I turned to Waspinator in a silent plead for assistance. The bug was already two steps ahead of me. Before I could completely face him, Waspinator interrupted before the tyrant could fit anything in. He spoke quickly and confidently. "Yes! We will beat them to the stasis pod eazzily!"

Megatron dropped the subject regarding our failure but he ordered us to carry out our second task… going to the crash site of the pod to ensure the robot inside was reprogrammed into a Predacon. The thought of trying to reprogram a protoform obviously miffed Waspinator judging by the confused expression that crossed his face upon its mention, but I had done enough reading and eavesdropping over Tarantulas' and Scorponok's shoulders to know that the most you had to do was extract the old program chip and replace it with a new one before the pod activated the protoform inside. I explained it to my partner when we got outside the Darkside to fly north. "It can't be too hard," I said when we gained altitude and felt the air grow steadily colder. "Tarantulas loaned me one of his prototype chips. All we have to do is slip the thing into the programmer dock and take out the Maximal one out before the pod scans for a beast-mode."

"What if Maximals beat us to the pod?" He inclined my head to look at me.

I shrugged it off. "We fly faster than they can run."

But, of course, this claim was somehow jinxed. We had reached the pod first like I said we would - the both of us ended up finding the Maximals at one point trying to cross a natural bridge as a shortcut to the pod, though my partner and I dealt with them by destroying their only means across the icy ravine - but the hatch was smashed in from the crash. I had tried to open the lid while my wingmate zapped at the seam with my optical lasers. The stasis pod seemed comatose but there would be no telling if it survived the crash or not unless we could get it open. Our first priority was to make sure the protoform was still alive since it would be wasteful to attempt reprogramming a dead being.

In the amount of time it took us to nearly get it open, the Maximals showed up.

Megatron had followed suit thankfully, putting the odds in Predacon favor once more, but the tide turned when Grape Face attempted to make the Maximals back off by leveling his dinosaur head cannon at two Siberian tigers nearby. The Maxis did back off, yes, but they did so only just long enough for Waspinator and I to open the pod and find it empty. The protoform had upped and left, already being a Maximal, and one of the two tigers abruptly transformed and attacked.

In hindsight, we got our skid plates handed to us. This is why I hate cats. Damn fleabags. Our first pod hunting expedition came to an abrupt end and, to say the least, it was far from pleasant.

As soon as Megatron, Waspinator, and I returned to the base, the first thing my wingmate and I did was to sit on one of the overheads of the deck overlooking the lava pits below. The heat that rose from the liquid fire was welcoming in comparison to the bitter cold we had to endure for over a megacycle, so sitting by that warmth was the only part of the day I thought satisfying. Though Scorponok and Tarantulas had long since submerged themselves into CR chambers - according to Megatron, the expedition our leader lead against the Maximal base went wary just nearly as soon as it started - it left only the tyrant with Waspinator and I in the control center. Megatron didn't seem to be minding my partner and I though. We were to ourselves at the moment.

An aspect of our relationship that came out was that we were… being physical now.

I lazily leaned up against him while his arm draped over my shoulders in a comforting gesture. The whole while, I couldn't keep myself from violently shivering at the cold invading my ironically cold-blooded frame. Waspinator was much better off than I was, though. Although his body was more accustomed to warmer weather as well, his beast-mode could at least adapt and survive in harsh conditions. Mine, on the other hand, couldn't. My pterodactyl beast-mode was extinct for a reason, after all. The warmth from the lava rose upward and encased us in its heat while our feet dangled over the edge of the deck.

"That could've gone better," I muttered in an offhand tone.

He nodded and shuddered slightly His wings buzzed very lightly. "At least Wazzpinator not get blown up this time. Terror-bot and Wazzpinator not have to spend more time in freezing hellhole."

I laughed, a harsh and dry sound from my rattling frame, and we sat there together for a long time. After that and as more time went on, we got even closer. Predacons usually weren't ones for physical contact, but we went as far as to occasionally set a hand on one another's shoulder from time to time. There would be friendly nudges and playful punches in the upper arm too, but there was still one thing that always stood out from the rest. There would be times during fights that Waspinator would go down but, before waiting for the fight to end or for the coast to clear, I would dive after him to get him out of harms way. My excuse for the change in style was because he was my friend and that going at the end of a fight to recover him would be too risky. Waspinator appeared to mostly accept this, but I couldn't. Something in the back of my head screamed that my explanation was only half true.

We kept making eye contact. These times it was more intense than ever.

If it wasn't queer enough before, it certainly was now. We could be making fun of Cheetor or Scorponok for all we cared but then one of us would avert our gaze just enough that we would lock gazes. It was when our eyes would met that we would go silent, but it was also usually me that would tear my optics away first. For reasons that even I couldn't fathom, our staring matches made me the most uncomfortable. Trying to reconstruct our conversation after these frequent occurrences was futile at most and new subject would emerge in an attempt to ignore the awkwardness of our unannounced competitions. It wasn't as if this mattered though… we would meet gazes once more later on no matter how hard we tried to avoid it. It was inevitable, just like the intertwining of our fates. Bah. That makes me sound cheesy. I blame Grape Face and Dinobot. Fraggers. I'd flog their sorry skid plates into the Matrix if I still could.

Our silence was broken, but something else wanted to be broken as well. Something far deeper. It was something that I wasn't comfortable enough to ask Waspinator about in regards to why we kept staring into one another's optics the way we did, but I thought it would be as equally dumb a question as to why I was suddenly more determined about saving his sorry hide when he was scrapped.

Then I broke. Quite literally speaking.

While Waspinator was obviously the Maximals' favorite target for fights, he only usually lost only one limb once every week or so. He could easily salvage it later and reattach it with my help on occasion, but he hadn't been fortunate enough to suffer from being blasted apart all at once. That was an occurrence that fate had left planned for me when another stasis pod crashed down in the desert wastelands of our southern territory. The pod had come down quickly, rapidly descending through the atmosphere like a meteor - though, in hindsight, this comparison wasn't too far off - and Grape Face had sent Scorponok and our new recruit, Blackarachnia - recovered because of my brilliant venture by the way, which I was already starting to regret - to retrieve it while putting my partner and I on standby. Megs had opted to keep Tarantulas at the base for reasons I could easily understand. No one wanted another potential Blackarachnia in our ranks. Considering the way Tarantulas programmed the widow's protoform, it was only a matter of whether he got his hands on another pod to do it again.

Of course, both Blackarachnia and Scorponok became indisposed of rather quickly. In other words, it was time to bring in the flyboys.

Waspinator and I veered off course from trying to form a perimeter around the crash site towards the epicenter of the sector. Megatron had contacted us moments before and filled us in that he had received twin distress signals from both Blackarachnia and Scorponok. As soon as we entered the main drop zone, Waspinator whirred past me and flew ahead to see where the stasis pod had fallen. A blast nicked him from behind before he could get far enough to even see it, though. Cheetor had been hidden well in the dusty landscape and neither of us would have never seen him if he hadn't shot at my partner. Big mistake on his part. Don't cats ever get tired of being stupid? No, obviously. Anyways, I spotted the freckled Maximal and opened fire just at the same time as Waspinator did. The cat shifted to beast-mode when he apparently suffered an energon surge and he ran off, darting in and out among the tall canyon rocks in a vain attempt to shake us off his tail.

I flew up to him and punched him in the arm. Waspinator turned his head to glance sideways at me with a questioning look and, just barely averting his gaze so we wouldn't lock optics, I made a gesture for him to go ahead so I could cut the cat off on the other side. Waspinator nodded back and went back to firing at the cheetah while I swerved away from him. I swooped up into the air and increased my speed, surging widely around past the rock formations while keeping my radar locked on Waspinator's position as he zipped after Cheetor though the maze. He continued his pursuit of the Maximal cat for another few cycles before the feline leapt over an energon geyser. I mentally flinched realizing where this was going. Waspinator I thought nothing of it - the geyser probably didn't look immediately active at first glance - but then it erupted as soon as he was directly over it. Whether it was bad luck or just horrid timing was beyond me. Waspinator was unconscious from the energon surge clicks later. I watched from the air as Cheetor skidded to a halt, turned, and watched as my idiot partner dropped out of the sky like a bag of lead. An energon surge danced around Waspinator's hide for a brief moment, he tensed, and then he went still.

I was ticked.

I swooped down and shot Cheetor from behind, sending him flying into the nearest rock formation hard enough to knock him unconscious. I glowered at him dangerously before turning my head to look at Waspinator. He looked only lightly unconscious and I figured he was fine. There was no one else out there to run the risk of hurting him, so I figured it best to deal with the Maxis. I glanced back over at Cheetor's prone form and scoffed. "So much for Maximal presence," I said scathingly. Then, with a smirk, "Now the pod will be mine!" With that, I took off into the air.

Perhaps I was just a little too confident… Okay, maybe a lot. Don't judge.

Trying to secure the pod was a mistake. I spotted Rhinox laying lifelessly by the pod in his beast-mode and I glided downward in my robot-mode to confront him. He opened his eyes and looked up helplessly at me when I approached. I mocked him and drew my gun, saying that this was my lucky day and his last, and it was when he closed his eyes that the hawk flew into range of the pod's scanners. The Maximal program chip was still in place. The pod scanned the bird and the Maximal inside was awakened. I shrieked my displeasure when the light started pooling from the pod, but then I had to shield my optics from the blast of light that followed. There was another shriek, but this time it wasn't mine. Although I couldn't see through the flash, there was a whoosh of air that carried across the landscape like a voice in a cave. When the light finally died down, I didn't need to see into the pod to know it was now empty.

I heard heavy footfalls against the canyon floor and looked over. Rhinox, still sporting his beast-mode, was righting himself back onto all fours. He looked at me defiantly with newfound confidence… son of a glitch. His voice was derisive. "Still feeling lucky, Terrorsaur?"

'Frag no,' I thought bitterly. I didn't voice that particular opinion of myself, mind you, but it was enough of a distraction to keep me from hearing the oversized falcon swoop down behind me. By the time I recognized its shadow, it was too late.

The brown and tan feathered hawk, with a shriek almost as grating as mine, dove bombed me from behind and hooked her talons into my shoulders. My immense amount of surprise and the surge of artificial adrenaline that surged through my tubing kept me from feeling the initial pain. I dropped my pistol and squawked just as the female launched into the air with me in her grasp. I grunted and tried reaching up to grab her legs in an attempt to escape, but I couldn't move my damn arms high enough to find purchase.

Then she let me go. I would have whooped with triumph because of that… but my entire body crashing into the canyon wall she threw me against kept me from doing so. All the wind was knocked out of me as the femme hawk took off into the air. I fell heavily to the ground, slamming my chest against the ground hard enough to knock another round of air out of my intake valves. I felt darkness creep into the corners of my vision in a threat to drag me into unconsciousness, but my stubborn sense of wounded pride forced me to regain my bearings and right myself up. I forced my body to stand on its slightly unsteady feet, shook my head to clear my scrambled senses, and then I finally found that I had enough air left in my chest to furiously screech my disdain to being handled so roughly. I activated my shoulder cannons so that they flipped into place and I turned sharply on my heel before shooting into the air after the new Maximal with my weapons blazing.

Instead of blackness invading my vision, it was replaced with scarlet. I was mad.

For the first few clicks of the fight, it was more of a chase. The femme dodged the rapid blasts I shot, flying behind several of the tall rocks that jutted from the ground to avoid getting hit, but my rising temper made me more and more determined to see her scrapped the more I missed. The eagle flittered behind another rock but, this time, my aim was accurate enough to cause damage. I hadn't hit her directly - unfortunately - but the pulse blast I fired hit the rock she dove behind. Rubble from the exploding stone hit her - she screeched in pain when this happened - and I felt a triumphant smirk cross my features. Damn Maxi got what was coming to her. Her edge lost, the femme flew into the air and gave another cry before diving down towards the ground again. The speed was too fast for me to follow her movements. I stopped in midair where the female had been moments before, and I snapped my head back in forth across the expanse of the canyon below in an attempt to regain sight of her. I couldn't. I felt my frustration boiling under my metallic skin… at least my anger didn't distract me enough from hearing the steadily rising whoosh of large, flapping wings. I looked up hearing the noise and gapped.

The hawk flew down, her figure obscured by the setting sun, and her voice reached my audios. "Airrazor… Maximize!"

The damn femme practically came out of nowhere. In a disgusting use of human terms, the slag hit the fan. Lucky me.

Her body shifted and transformed, revealing her small and lithe body, and then she propelled herself straight at me. She wanted to play chicken? Fine. I could do that, and I wasn't about to let a newly reawakened Maximal, flier wannabe beat me at my element in the skies. If there was going to be a top flier on that godforsaken dirtball, it was going to be me. I lunged for her right back. Neither of us backed out. With a crash, we collided with one another and went into a spiraling freefall.

Falling.

That was something that I did not settle well with.

At first, I tried to ignore the wind roaring past my face and the buzz of my online computers telling me that I was falling. I went for the femme's throat and she went for mine. Any other flier in my position would have probably taken in the possibility of biting her face off or at least admiring her looks as a femme, but that was the last thing on my mind. In fact, I had to force myself very hard not to panic and force myself away from her the moment we starting to plummet through the sky. The possibility of crashing with her into the ground with her on the bottom so that I could kill her? Not a chance in the Pitt. I hated falling… was horrified of it. For any flier to be afraid of falling is just as embarrassing as you can imagine it is. The cause of my phobia was a long story that'll get explained later. Right now, it's now important.

They both swooped away from one another, me being noticeably less gracefully than the hawk Maximal. We were both around a hundred feet from the canyon floor, putting maybe ten feet away from one another while I faced her down. My cannons were still drawn, giving me an edge right away, and I fired twice. Airrazor ended up being too graceful, dodging every one of my furious blasts before whipping about and aiming her arm at me. A compartment above her wrist flipped open and she fired her own pulse blast. Her aim was dead accurate and I had no time to avoid it. The shot hit me square in the chest, blasting off me left shoulder cannon in the process, and the whiplash made me turn my back on her in midair. I was too stunned to realize my potentially fatal mistake. You never turn your back on an opponent. Not unless you want to die.

Stupid me, I wasn't able to regain my scrambled senses in time and the damn femme flier blasted me in the back again before I could turn to face her. The shot sent me spiraling towards the ground to my immense horror - my core processor spooked so badly that it wouldn't have been surprised if I died of the first half my namesake right there and then - and then she open fired again with another set of weapons. Females with wrist mounted automatic missile darts are a very bad thing, by the way. Especially when you get hit by the shots with full force. Full, painful force.

I don't remember much after that, but I think Waspinator's scream was louder than mine.

Then, good Primus, there was the pain.

Ever been dumped into a pit of acid? No? I never was either, but I'll bet my wings that it felt just as bad. I felt like someone had taken smelt eating plasma and dumped it all over my hide… right after they tore every limb off my body. Everything was total chaos. Everything went offline, aside from the pain, and then everything came back screaming. Louder than I usually do, and that was something that scared me more than the pain. I couldn't even keep track of all the emergency data that swamped my vision for the one split second that it did, and then it all went dark again from shorting out. The pain remained however.

Was I screaming? Was I awake? I don't know. All I knew was the pain and how much of it I was in. Then there was the wind.

It was moving over my face and body. It totally defied the fact that I thought I should have been blown to pieces, but that was beside the point. Was I still falling? Maybe I was. That horrified me.

"Oh Primus, don't let me fall, don't let me fall, don't let-"

Was that me? Like I said, I don't remember much. What I do remember, though, is the pain when it ended. There was a warmth and someone whispering something to me before a flash of brilliant emerald flashed across my vision. Then all that remained was calmness.

The darkness lingered for quite sometime. Then I resurfaced.

My optics snapped open and I was met with the white brilliance of the inside of a CR chamber. I was in robot-mode, all in one piece, and alive. I was so caught off guard that I spooked and reeled when the CR lift started to rise from beneath me. In moments, I was exposed back to the life of the command center. I gasped and strained to sit up on the lift as CR fluid dripped off my sore hide.

A voice addressed me. "Well, that took long enough, yesss."

I had to bite back a sarcastic reply, keeping my gaze on the grated lift beneath me while I stayed on my hands and knees. "What happened?"

Surprisingly, Scorponok's voice - slightly muffled, albeit - piped up. "New flier Maximal shot you down and blew you to scrap. Waspinator salvaged the pieces and called me in as backup to put you back together. You were hurt bad, so he airlifted you back to base. Saved your sorry, skid plate."

That was probably something that amused the both of them, because Megatron stifled a small chuckle and I could only imagine that Scorponok was following suit with him. When I finally managed to find my feet and stand, I was met with the sight of Megatron sitting in his throne watching me. He turned to address me and completely fill me in. My repair cycle had been delayed for a few megacycles that same day when a new stasis pod fell and when our power went out to keep us blind as to where it fell. Scorponok was working on it, but Grape Face had a very distinct feeling that it was entirely Tarantulas' fault… and he was more so convinced considering that the treacherous freak tried to steal the once undamaged stasis pod from the site of the new pod crash. The new protoform had been successfully programmed into a Predacon because of him, yes, but the ant had a serious programming error that made him think that he was an actual ant. When Tarantulas stole the stasis pod and tried to bring it to his lair, the new Pred followed him. Tigertron somehow managed to get involved and he blew the stasis pod up. Then Primal came along and blew the ant up. Inferno, as he was called, had been put in a CR chamber to be restored. Tarantulas had gone missing, and no one even knew where Blackarachnia was.

I asked about how long I was unconscious.

Megatron shrugged. "A few days, at best. I didn't keep track."

"Because you're a fragger, you son of a…" I thought bitterly, trailing off to end my mental seething in case I said any of it accidently outloud. Then, outloud, "Where's Waspinator?"

"Patrol," he answered coolly.

"This isn't our normal patrol, time," I said, raising an optical ridge questionably.

"He's taken on the brunt of both yours and his duties ever since your accident," Grape Face replied with a minor frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Patrols were extended to make up for your absence."

"As useless as that was," another voice interrupted. Both Megatron and I looked over and saw a pair of legs sticking out from underneath a console. Scorponok was obviously rewiring something, although I could have cared less as to what. He didn't move from his position and kept working with complete disregard to me. Whatever it was the glitch head was doing, he was completely engrossed in it.

Megatron smirked down in his general direction. He was still talking to me when he spoke next, but didn't bother bestowing me with his ugly mug directed at me. "We've had four territory breaches since you went out. As much as I hate to say it, it will be good to have you back and fully operational. "Yes…"

I was glad he wasn't looking at me. I sneered and felt my face twist irritably. I suppose that I should have taken what he said as a compliment, but I still couldn't help but feel angered that he was disrespecting my partner so horribly. Waspinator had saved me, and here this fragger was shrugging him off as a useless pawn for just a few mistakes. Hadn't Waspinator taken on my duties as well as his own in order to assure that our entire operation wouldn't fall out from underneath Megatron's feet? So what if there were a few small security breaches? So what if Waspinator was a klutz? So what if he couldn't speak in first person? Waspinator was courageous for the things he had done for me, and it made me mad to know that Megatron could disregard him so cruelly.

The monitors blipped to signal that there was an approaching Predacon signal approaching the base. At first we thought it was one of the arachnids judging by how slow the blip was moving… but a scan quickly revealed that it was actually Waspinator, speak of The Fallen. I didn't even ask to dismiss myself. I hightailed it out of them to meet him. Megatron didn't call out to stop me. I left the control room.

I flew out of the Darkside's main entrance and landed on a solid slab of hardened lava. Trying to pick out Waspinator from the landscape was easy enough, because the emerald of his armor stood out drastically against the black of the hardened lava rocks in the field. At first I figured that he probably got into a minor scuffle with Rattrap or Cheetor, but then I noticed that there weren't any normal laser burns on his hide. His did have an annoying looking limp though, which suggested to me that he had been walking for a long time. That bothered me. Why would he be walking when he was a flier?

That was when it finally occurred to me that I couldn't see the partially transparent outline of his wings. They were gone.

This bothered me a relatively great deal, despite the fact that I wasn't the one in Waspinator's position. My emerald partner had been a helicopter back on Cybertron while I was a jet. Loosing his ability to fly wouldn't nearly bother Waspinator as much because he wasn't initially born programmed flier. I was. Taking away a natural programmed flier's ability to fly is basically similar to taking the instinct to hunt out of, I don't know, a wolf or something. If you took it from a domesticated dog, the dog would probably care less. If it couldn't hunt, it could still settle for being fed by its master. Wolves wouldn't be so lucky. Get it? It wasn't disturbing me that I cared about Waspinator's wellbeing. The fact that he was missing his wings bothered me.

I knew there was only one fragger who could have done that to him and known its significance. Taking out any flier's wings was a sign of huge disrespect, executed mostly by other fliers themselves. Waspinator had tried to engage Airrazor. Waspinator… tried to avenge me.

Airrazor, unfortunately, won.

As I watched with mounting anger - towards the femme, not my partner - I watched as Waspinator got closer. He looked miserable, keeping his head downcast as he struggled to make it back to base. It occurred to me that it must have taken him so long to get back not because he was walking, but because he probably had to frequently shift to beast-mode and crawl until his systems were stable enough for him to transform and walk again. From what I could see of his downturned face, it was contorted miserably.

"Waspinator!"

At least the poor guy's hearing wasn't shot, lucky for me. He snapped to attention hearing my voice cut through the air and looked up in my direction. I stared back at Waspinator when our eyes locked.

He stood thirty or so feet from me across the lava field - the patch we were standing on was hardened rock, so we were in no danger of the lava flows - and we found ourselves instantly engaged in another one of our staring matches. His blue optics were intense while he stared back into my own scarlet ones. It was usually me who broke our staring matches, but this time it was him… only because he lunged for me. Aside from how obviously tired he was, he sprinted the entire distance between us and wrapped his arms around my neck when he reached me. He buried his face against my shoulder. For a moment, I savored the feeling of his form pressed against mine. It was a thought I quickly shoved aside, though slightly less quickly than I was comfortable with. All he seemed to care about was that I was all right. That was all he gave a damn about right there and then.

I recoiled slightly, taking a step back when Waspinator swung his arms around my neck and held me. Finally, after an awkward moment, I wrapped my own arms around his upper torso and buried my pale face against his own shoulder. Screw it. I was glad he was all right too. He could have ended up like me engaging Airrazor the way he did. I was glad he hadn't been.

We had been physical with one another before, but this was something new all the same. We stood together like that for sometime and I felt Waspinator tracing his fingers over the nape of my neck. That was a place where my I could only imagine that my head had been blasted off my body during my scuffle with Airrazor. I was caught off guard by the touch but then I realized I was caressing one of the spots where Waspinator's wings had been shot off.

We broke apart, both with some reluctance and relief. That embrace had made me particularly uncomfortable and I hoped that Waspinator wouldn't be able to see it in my face. Waspy seemed distracted, and I wondered if he was maybe feeling the same things I was. Either way, I smirked at him lightly and turned away to walk back to base. I could hear Waspinator's footfalls as he followed after me, though we went in silence. Another issue altogether, we also avoided optic contact.

Then Waspinator stopped. I couldn't hear him following him anymore.

I turned back to Waspinator when I heard him stop, raising an optic ridge at him. True to what I presumed, he had stopped. The mech was looking off to the side to purposely avoid my gaze. For a brief moment, I had to wonder whether or not his limp was hurting him now that he had sprinted to get to me. "What is it?"

If I had the wings - wings that, thankfully, would be able to get easily repaired with a short round in a CR - they probably would have been erect with nervousness I could feel radiating off his body. After what looked to be an agonizing moment, he sighed lightly and swallowed hard. For some reason at the same time, my fuel pump pumped faster and my spark skipped a pulsation. I could only imagine that Waspinator's did the same. "…Terror-bot want to go with Wazzpinator to mountain in sector Tanna-16 to watch sunset? Izz pretty-"

To be blunt, his address was more or less the equivalent of asking someone out. Me out.

Instead of feeling repulsed that my wingmate was asking me of such a thing, I merely only smirked feeling mirth build up in my spark. My lips curled up slightly and his optics narrowed playfully. "Why are you asking me?"

Waspinator didn't look sure of what else he wanted to say, and he initially didn't. The poor guy probably wasn't even sure why he asked me to go with him in the first place. We were friends - two of them getting ridiculously close, I'll admit - and I found myself repeatedly telling myself that over and over again in my head. My mind reeled slightly when I realized that I wasn't doing a very good job of sounding convincing to myself and, for whatever reason, the mere term 'friend' didn't seem to fit anymore. It in no way felt right like calling him my emerald angel.

That was the first time I thought of him that way.

Waspinator continued to stare off to his direct left so that he didn't have to look at me head on. He stood there silently for a few more clicks and I decided to break the silence for him. I smiled at him, and it wasn't one of my trademark semi-sarcastic smiles either. Waspinator still didn't move, and then I reached forward to ruffle the top of his head in a playful manner like he was a sparkling. Waspinator still didn't look at me, but I swore that a slight blush envelop his features. My hand, despite itself, lingered for perhaps longer than it should have.

Looking back on it now, it hadn't been long enough.

"Consider it a date."

I didn't need to be one of his closest friends to know that his spark was leaping in his chest. His face brightened up considerably, blue optics flashing vibrantly, and that much was enough of a dead giveaway to his happiness. Seeing him happy made me happy too. I smiled at him.

We went back inside and the poor bastard sat in the CR for a few cycles so that his wings could regenerate. When Waspinator reemerged, I was waiting next to the tank for him. With his wings back in their rightful place, we went to the command center and both asked for a leave to retire to Tanna-16. Grape Face really didn't have much of a say on whether or not he could keep us in the Darkside - we weren't on duty and it wasn't any of his damn business as to what we did - so the glitch head let us go. We still had a curfew to abide to though but, seeing the time it was then and the time we needed to return, we still had a decent five megacycles to ourselves. It took us about twenty cycles to get to Tanna because it was on the furthermost part of Predacon territory. Getting there was a pain in the aft, but the trip was definitely worth while.

The dirtball we landed on was a hassle, yeah, but seeing Tanna for what it was made dealing with the frustrating organics and energon radiation worth it.

Tanna-16 had a huge mountain in the center of the sector and it was the most gorgeous organic paradise I had ever seen. I originally first caught a brief glimpse of it while Waspinator and I were on patrol, but I honestly hadn't cared much for it. I didn't care about a lot of things back then, but even then I had to cave and admit that the little dust ball we found ourselves on wasn't nearly as bad as I first thought. The grid was surrounded by a forest and was complete with a large lake that rested at the foot of the main mountain. Without a doubt, it had the best view of the sunset you could ever see. While the Maximals were more eastward and got an excellent view of the sunrises, our territory was more westward. This gave us the best view of the sun's setting.

Now that I was really seeing it for the first time and not just glancing at it, I saw how beautiful it really was. My partner and I both hovered above the sector and I let out a long whistle. I couldn't find anything else to say. I was lost for words.

He buzzed. "Wazzpinator likes it."

I grinned. "I do too. C'mon, I bet I can out fly you down to that lake!" I stopped flapping my wings and I dove downward. It wouldn't even occur to me until later that I let myself freefall, despite my unprofound terror of it and heights. Wind rushed past my face as I neared the lake to the point where it probably would have seemed as though I was bound to hit it… but then I pulled up as the last possible second and swooped up gracefully into the air. I flapped my wings and landed in the tree overlooking the water. I squawked, shifted to my robot-mode, and looked around. Waspinator hadn't followed me. I glanced up into the air and saw that he was still hovering there. What was he waiting for? An invitation? "Hey! What are you waiting for, an invitation!"

He seemed to snap back into awareness and out of his thoughts, wherever they were. He looked in my general direction. "Wazzpinator coming!" He flew down to the tree overlooking the pristine lake, landing on the branch next to me. The wood groaned beneath us slightly from our weight, but my scanners indicated that it would be strong enough to hold… I hoped. He stayed in beast-mode.

I was grinning "Slowpoke."

Waspinator snorted and swatted my arm with a spindly black wasp paw. His eyes sparkled. "Wazzpinator has faster reflexes."

"Say that to the shots you couldn't dodge when you were blown to scrap."

I laughed and he laughed too. Then, without as much as a warning, Waspinator pushed me off the branch. I was too caught off guard and surprised to retaliate and fly back up. I fell into the icy water with a loud splash, making the surface of the lake sparkle and ripple in the sunlight like a glassless mirror. Adrenaline surged through my body as quickly as the chill of the water and instantly I was flapping manically attempting to right myself and make it back to the surface. An attempt, unfortunately, less dignifiedly said than done. Out of instinct and after the initial shock, I managed to right myself and find my way back to the surface. My head broke the surface, I whipped about and looked accusingly up at the tree where Waspinator was. The insect was laughing at me… or, rather, it was playful sniggering. Either way, he wasn't being cruel. I could tell when someone was, and cruelty was an aspect of personality that I didn't think Waspinator was physically capable of. The wasp seemed to notice my glaring at him and stifled his laughing. He probably thought I was angry with him.

I smirked.

Waspinator gulped audibly and backed away from the edge of the branch. My smirk broke into an uncontrolled grin and, quickly intaking air through my olfactory sensors and holding it, I let myself sink out of view. I was used to the temperature water now and this time I was focused enough to actually attempt swimming… something, albeit, that I hadn't tried on the planet yet. Not to gloat, but I actually wasn't too bad… okay, fine. I am gloating. Old habits die hard, all right? My vision was clear enough looking through the water that I could make out the shadow of the tree branch where Waspinator was perched, and I managed to swim over to it before activating my antigravs and shooting upward. I erupted through the water and shot up behind Waspinator where he was perched. He didn't initially notice me, but he certainly did when I screamed in his audio.

"AIRRAZOR'S A GLITCH!"

Waspinator screeched in surprise and he lost his grip on the branch. I watched gleefully as he fell into the water with a loud splash before the poor sap could get his wings to work. He shrieked with surprise and failed around violently in the same way I had. I laughed brightly. The mech was hopeless, but that made him him. I wouldn't want to change that for the world. With a victorious shriek, I leapt up, twisted around into the air, and dove in after him. I hit the water headfirst and the splash it produced was enough for Waspinator to finally determine exactly where the surface was. Through the water, I could see him flip around and shift into his respectful robot-mode. I held my breath. Above me, the ripples on the lake surface turned calm and I watched Waspinator turn and twist around in the water looking for me when I immediately resurface. I took his jerky movements of panic as my cue to erupt back up. Waspinator shrieked in surprise when I jumped on him and pulled him under. To outsiders, the gesture might have looked violent… but, in reality, it was playful. We proceeded to play wrestle about in the water like sparklings.

For a moment, I forgot we were soldiers. For a sweet while, there was no one else beside me and Waspinator. A red slab of garbage and a stunning piece of emerald artwork.

Diving in and out of the water, wrestling about, and even diving to the bottom, we occupied ourselves with the sparkling lake until we dragged ourselves out suffering from intense water log. Completely spent, we both collapsed on the shore lying side-by-side in the late afternoon sun. I sprawled myself out on my stomach beside Waspinator while my partner shifted onto his back to state concededly up at the sky. His threw his hands behind his head and crossed his legs nonchalantly. The way the lighting was playing off his armor made his usually dull green sheen an emerald hue. Occasionally, he pointed out clouds to me when he thought they resembled something. One of which was Megatron's damned rubber ducky - which I promptly sniggered at - but then my focus on reality started to wane. I don't know when I fell asleep, but that wasn't important. All that was important was what I dreamt about.

Hands. They were all over me. I didn't know where I was or what in the Pitt's name was going on, but I was pinned under something heavy and loving it. Usually I would never take kindly to being grounded because of my severe paranoia of being unable to fly alongside my crippling sense of claustrophobia, but that didn't matter. Skilled hands were working up my chassis, around my sensitive cables, probing and pinching deliciously. It didn't matter that I didn't know who was touching me, because I was arching and straining into those touches without consent or fear. I wasn't afraid. I suppose that any normal mech would have - especially me, granted the awful atrocities I had to endure back on Cybertron - but that wasn't the case. I felt safe. Whole.

Then those talented hands were running over my chest in the general area just above my spark. If I hadn't been dreaming, I would have instantly tensed and forced myself to flee. However, here I didn't. The fingers probed and I let them. Finally, I could feel that my spark was revealed. I reactivated my optics.

The darkness of the room wasn't scarlet, which it should have been given that the light that would have been thrown out from my spark was red. Instead, the entire blackness had been replaced by a bright green. Emerald. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw huge feathered wings. Not hawk wings. These were far bigger and broader.

I felt that the hands on my chest had tips, resembling claws. I only knew of one mech who had hands like that.

I started to return back to awareness, and the brilliant emerald that had once blinded me began to fade back into reality as my optics - the ones of my physical form - reactivated. The sensation of the hands on my chest turned ghostly before lifting entirely. It was a highly unnerving sensation. I looked up, chancing seeing the winged mech, but he was gone. All I was met with the blue of the sky. How had I gotten there, again? Something landed with a thud next to my head and I looked. Waspinator, in all his emerald glory, was in beast-mode dropping a bloodied dead rabbit next to my head. I remembered where I was in an instant, although that didn't stop me about thinking about Waspinator's hands. I felt my face turn hot and prayed that he wouldn't see the blush devolving on my face.

I looked back down a the dead hare. I could see the incisor marks where Waspinator's beast-mode jaws had grabbed hold of it. That was when I was given a very uncomfortable reminder that my own beast-mode's stomach was empty. I really must have been in the CR chamber for quite sometime, because that was when I realized exactly how famished I was. I felt like I could have eaten an entire elk or something. Despite being a Cybertronian and, once upon a time, needing only to refuel on energon, having an organic beast-mode was a hassle because you had to feed that too. I felt a touch of affection for Waspinator realizing that he had gone out of his way to catch me something. I glanced back up at him. He looked indifferent - or maybe that was just his beast-mode's usual expression, I don't know - and his wing twitched. He tilted his head to the side.

I sat up and shifted to beast-mode. I eyed the dead organic for a moment before I shyly inclined my head to Waspinator just barely. My voice was a mere mutter and probably would have been almost entirely inaudible if my partner didn't strain his hearing. "I could use some help with this…"

He dropped his antennas apprehensively. After a click or two, the giant wasp slowly took a hesitant step forward and took a part of the rabbit's leg in his mandibles. I took a hold of a shoulder with my upper beak and, like two predators sharing a single prey, we tore it in half. We ate mostly in silence - messily mind you, and Waspinator had the hilarious habit of making odd nomnom noises when he ate - before we retired back to the water to wash the blood and bits of fur off. I perched on a small boulder, dipped my beak into the water, and I brought it back out before running my claws over the length to get the blood off. Waspinator tried to follow my elegant example and do something similar but, courteous of his general idiocy and lack of sufficient coordination, he fell into the water.

Once that was taken care of, we took to the air and headed for the actual mountain that sat in the dead epicenter of Tanna-16. The sky had turned a deep pink that changed to an orangey red where the sun was positioned. We circled it twice in the air before we found a suitable spot to land on a ledge at the entrance of a cave. We were about two thousand or so feet up from the ground.

Then sun was starting to descend in the distance and, although not a full sunset yet, it was still stunning. The sky was painted hues of orange and pink and the landscape below was caught in the colors. The lake shimmered a sparkling carroty yellow and the treetops in the forest glowed a light ginger. I shifted to robot-mode with a whistle and I commented to Waspinator that it really was a pretty sight. He buzzed, flattered by the remark, and sat on the edge of the cliff. I was apprehensive to follow because of my fear of heights, but I sat himself next to him regardless. Out of instinct, I nervously peeked over the cliff's edge to judge the height. I hoped Waspinator didn't notice. It was only later that I realized it, but I was sitting closer to him than you would usually sit next to someone.

My fuel pump throbbed anxiously in my chest. Sitting so high up on the cliff made me nervous, yeah, but sitting next to Waspinator as close as I was also made me feel partially unnerved as well. We sat in silence for a few cycles before I thanked Waspinator for inviting me out with him. Waspinator didn't hear and asked me to repeat what I said.

"I said thanks for inviting me out here."

"Oh. Well… Thankzz for coming with Wazzpinator."

We went silent again, watching the sun set in the distance, and that seemed to the end of it. The silence continued on for a few more moments and I found it relaxing to a degree. The burning sun of a star continued to descend and it turned from a golden orange to a brightening light red. The sky changed with it, turning the pinks to orange to a deep scarlet red. The clouds were stained pink and a flock of birds flew underneath them like black blots on a canvas. I shattered the silence when I next spoke.

"You know Waspy, you were right when you said that cloud looked like Megatron's rubber ducky. I swear, there is nothing more deformed or ugly in this entire universe. Why the slaggin' Pitt does he even keep that thing!" I cleared my throat and screwed up my face. "My name is Megatron, yesss. I love acting stupid and talking like a total idiot who pretends to be smart. I like to snuggle with my rubber ducky because it is squeaky, floats on water, and has a no CPU processor just like me! Rubber ducky, you're the one! You make bath time lots of fun-"

Whether or not it was my expression, my voice impression of Megatron, or my absolutely horrendous singing, Waspinator burst out laughing. The wasp Predacon fell backward, held his sides, and nearly cried because he was cackling so hard. I was worried that he would choke or explode if he didn't force himself to stop when he did. After sometime, the mech found the strength to sit up again. There were tears pricking blue optics and he forced his laughing to be reduced to random, irregular giggling. I smiled at him and Waspinator smiled right back. He turned back to the sunset snickering every so often.

Something drastic changed.

An unseen force in the air shifted and I was sure I would have broken out into gooseflesh if I was organic. I couldn't stop looking at him. When I tried to follow his gaze and watch the sunset, it felt as though the neck gears had fused together. It was as if the energy around us grew both hot and cold at the same time. It confused me but I attempted to brush it off even when my spark felt as though it skipped a beat. Waspinator seemed to detect the change as well. His field of vision had drifted back towards me again - he was probably intending to ask how I had found out about Megatron's rubber ducky, if my presumption was correct - but he stopped short when he noticed I looking straight back at me. His expression dropped in a quizzical manner. His optics were brightened warmly in the glow of the setting sun as he and I made eye contact. The air shifted again, turning warmer, but the intensity of our stare increased to the breaking point. Whatever it was between us that wanted to be broken was an inch, perhaps a millimeter from being shattered forever. No more than three clicks ticked by but neither of us had said or done anything.

The barrier was suddenly shattered. It would remain broken forever.

I very, very slowly leaned forward several centimeters. It was only noticeable unless you were really paying attention, but it wasn't as if I was doing it on my own accord. Something - and I was never quite sure what - seemed to draw me closer to Waspinator than I was comfortable with. My partner recoiled somewhat, more likely than not unsure of what I was doing, and the upper part of his left wing twitched nervously.

He leaned forward as well.

I tried to keep my face as neutral as a possibly could as he returned my earlier gesture. Waspinator leaned forward as well, probably even before he could even bring himself to fully understand what he was doing. He looked very deep in thought, almost entranced. Either that, or the lighting was playing tricks on me. I tensed and felt the muscles of my beast-mode's wings and other organic patches tighten to bring themselves closer to my body so they stiffened against my frame. What was going on now became inevitable and I found myself, to my own surprise, not taken aback. Why had I felt that this was going to happen sooner or later? I shouldn't have been surprised. I wasn't surprised actually, but I was still anxious.

Our shadows trailed out behind our seated bodies as long, tall silhouettes against the steep rock wall of the mountain. Our frames were engulfed in the fiery brilliance of the sun. We knew this, yeah, but we ignored it. Nothing mattered now except for the intense look we gave one another with our not so silent silence. Our actions spoke louder than anything and it wasn't quite silence anymore. Waspinator edged even closer, his large blue optics gazing back at what I could only presume were my very hesitant red ones. We were inches apart, literally breathing on each other as the sun continued it's decent into the night. It was then that he offlined his optics, letting his mandibles part just barely. I shuddered and, in turn and almost without even thinking, I dimmed my own. I was too paranoid to completely deactivate them - we were on the side of a cliff face, after all - and I'll admit that I was nervous. Afraid actually, but I leaned forward regardless. My mouth parted and I tilted my head to the side. I couldn't close the distance. I couldn't will myself to.

…He kissed me.